


Practicing for Real Life

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Guilt, John Winchester is a good man, Pre-Series, Young!Dean, father/son bonding, parental angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 01:43:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7147022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John teaches Dean a necessary skill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practicing for Real Life

It wasn’t ideal, and it made John’s stomach turn to do it, but it was better Dean learn this way than under more dire circumstances when life and death might hang in the balance.

Dean sat at his feet, eyes wide and wary even though his young mouth was pressed into a hard, determined line. The boy had been doing very well learning to school his expressions both in public--when John had his boys out with him, telling blatant lies to witnesses and waitresses alike about who they were and why they were there--and here, in the myriad of motel rooms they stayed in, as he fielded, ducked, and dodged his little brother’s increasingly persistent questions about the way they lived and why it was different from the other kids in his kindergarten classes with an agility of thinking and dose of creativity that rivaled John’s own. 

Dean was a good boy, such a good boy. His little shoulders carried so much weight, and there were moments in the deep of the night while John watched his sons sleeping, tangled up together in a nest of pillows and blankets for comfort and warmth, that he wanted to give it up, to just shake them both awake, bundle them into the car and drive somewhere far away from the dark and the monsters and the past and settle them into a safe, warm corner of the world where none of that could touch them ever again.

He would put Sammy into a good, stable school and watch that sharp little mind of his, which hid so quietly behind those ever-changing fox-like eyes, develop by leaps and bounds and soak up information like a sponge. He would praise the cut paper and glued macaroni projects and give them the attention they deserved for their masterful execution by tiny five-year-old hands instead of grunting and nodding without really seeing while he poured over lore and obits and the best way to kill something before it killed him.

He would pop the hood on the Impala and spend whole afternoons with the hot sun on his back showing Dean all the ins and outs of the engine and how to coddle his beautiful lady who had taken such good care of them for so long, how to keep her tuned to perfection, humming sweetly, how to coax that little bit more power out of her, not because they might need to outrun something big and dangerous and out for blood, but just so they could find some back country road and open her up for the hell of it, whooping and laughing as the road roared beneath them and the wind whipped around them. 

He wanted that for his boys. He really did. He knew she would have wanted it to. 

Mary would have been so disappointed in him to see them all now, to see what he had turned himself and his sons into. But his heart couldn’t rest, it couldn’t hold the memory of her bathed in fire, eyes so very lucid and knowing, pinned on him, somehow terrified, and not, at the same time. He couldn’t silence the persistent whisper of her in his head, coming from the memory of those eyes, telling him to find what had done this to her—to them. And he would. He would find it, kill it, and walk away from the dark for the last time. It was still possible. He could still do that. This life had not written itself in his bones yet.

John sighed, frustrated and resigned, pushed open his big pocket knife with the edge of his thumb. It made a clean ‘snick’ in the silence, and Sam stirred a little on the bed opposite them where he was already asleep for the night, but did not wake. He looked down at Dean. The boy had shuttered the awe and fear in his eyes. They looked closed off now and hard as the jewels they resembled, glinting brightly in the light of the bedside lamp. 

‘Ready?’ John asked.

Dean gave a stiff nod.

John set the blade to his skin and cut down deep, nearly half an inch, inviting the blood to well up quickly and flow freely. He drew it along his arm for a good four inches, teeth clenched, breathing slow and deliberate, then he held it out to Dean.

‘Just like we practiced, son,’ John said calmly, and he felt a sick surge of pride that turned his guts in knots when Dean reached out with suture needle and thread and blood-slickened fingers, and his hands did not shake at all.


End file.
